Trailsend was a nondescript town at the end of a nondescript road that led to nowhere, and two days ago I had driven slowly down the main street delighted by the isolated vibe oozing from the mouldering shopfronts. Delighted that is, until I realised I was out of cash, and then Trailsend felt much less a country retreat and more like a stifled prison. Fortunately I had stumbled upon a brief job advertisement pinned up in the town’s only convenience store, which read:

Exotic Creatures Wildlife Park requires short-term research assistant – no experience necessary. Award rates plus overtime, accommodation if required. Travellers welcome to apply.

I had called the number, spoken briefly to a Dr Frombeir, and was hired right away. Now a day later and twenty minutes drive from Trailsend, I was stopped beside the first open gate once the road became dirt, although there was no sign anywhere to indicate that I was in the right place. With a slightly nervous flutter in my stomach, I swung my van off the road and proceeded down the dusty driveway.

"So – you’re a traveller?" smiled Dr Frombeir at me from across the table.

I nodded. "I was just passing through town when I ran out of money. Your advertisement was very timely."

"Good, good." He waved away the details of my circumstances with a flick of his wrist. "Will you be needing accommodation?"

"Not if it’s alright to park my van here – I sleep inside it."

He nodded yes. "So no-one is waiting for you back in town? No room booked in your name?"

I shook my head distractedly and wondered why this was important.

"Here, sign this," continued Frombeir as he pushed a stapled wad of paper toward me. "It’s the terms of your employment – all the usual stuff, plus a confidentially agreement. Just sign it now and I can give you a copy to read later at your convenience."

I picked up the offered pen and attempted to skim read over the many paragraphs, but I had only absorbed a few sentences when the door behind the Doctor swung open and admitted an attractive, mid-twenties looking blonde wearing dirty khaki overalls and a white blouse.

"Fromby darling," she cooed. "I’ve just finished feeding the –" she stopped mid-sentence as she saw me sitting at the table. "Hello there."

"Julia, this is our new employee," the Doctor said without turning around. "Perhaps now is a good time for you to show him some of the exhibits and explain what it is we do here?"
"Yes, of course." Julia smiled at me conspiratorially and then glanced at the papers I held. "Those might get dirty where we’re going. Finish up and let the Doctor take care of them."

Her lovely smile seemed so earnest and innocent, and I was slightly addled by the sudden appearance of such a lovely girl in so remote a location. I hastily signed the papers at the indicated places, pushed them back to the Doctor, and hurried to follow Julia from the room.

* * *

Julia led me through the small administration building and out an external door, to where an electric golf cart was parked.

"Hop in," she instructed, sliding into the drivers seat.
She drove us up a small hill and paused on the ridge. Pointing at the pens laid out in front and below us, she looked at me with gorgeous brown eyes and flashed another smile. "The creatures you are about to see are rather unusual," she confided. "But don’t be alarmed. Once you get used to their peculiarities the job can be a lot of fun."
So saying, she drove down the hill and began to weave the vehicle between the tall fences of the creatures’ pens.
There is no way to describe what I saw inside those cages, except to say that the creatures were – quite literally as it seemed to me – out of this world. I sat next to Julia with eyes as big as saucers as she nonchalantly described what we were passing at that moment.

"The Hairy Beast," she gestured. Then, "Butterfly Man, Longhaired Hippy, Quadrapod, and Puddleflesh." There were others – lots of others – but by then my mind was completely overloaded, and their names slid past my consciousness without leaving a mark.

"Where … do they come from?" I gasped, as Julia drove us back to Administration.

"It’s a secret" she replied slyly. "But as you have already signed the confidentiality agreement, I can tell you. Those creatures are from another dimension."

Somehow, I found that answer acceptable – not because I was a space cadet and believed in other realms of reality, but because I simply could not comprehend that creatures so disturbed and bizarre could be found on Planet Earth.

"Come," she said, pulling me inside. "Sit down and have a cup of tea. The first viewing can give quite a shock."

On a bench sat a kettle, and she quickly boiled water and poured it over a waiting teabag. "Milk? Sugar?" she asked congenially.

I shook my head. Something felt wrong here …
Julia handed me the tea and I sipped distractedly. My thoughts were as unsettled as dry leaves in a gale.

"Those creatures," I said suddenly, my tongue strangely thick and unresponsive, "all had very human-like faces." I fought the rising tide of nausea, but the truth rushed unstoppably toward me. "They’re not from another dimension at all!"

I lost control of myself then, falling to the floor as my body shook in wild spasms and bone-breaking jerks. I screamed. "What have you done? Julia, what have you done to me?"

"Didn’t you read the fine print?" she asked smugly.

As my senses faded and deep blackness took hold, I thought I could hear the Doctor speaking from somewhere far, far above. "Dammit, Julia. Another failure."

"Epic," she agreed. "Next time I’ll double the formula in the teabags."